How Reading in a Second Language Protects Your Heart
Reading words in a second language spontaneously activates native
language translations in the human bilingual mind. Here,
we show that the emotional valence of a word
presented in English constrains unconscious access to its Chinese
translation.
We asked native speakers of Chinese fluent with
English to indicate whether or not pairs of English words were related
in
meaning while monitoring their brain electrical
activity. Unbeknownst to the participants, some of the word pairs hid a
sound
repetition if translated into Chinese.
Remarkably, English words with a negative valence such as “violence” did
not automatically
activate their Chinese translation, even though
we observed the expected sound repetition priming effect for positive
and
neutral words, such as “holiday” and “theory.”
These findings show that emotion conveyed by words determines language
activation
in bilinguals, where potentially disturbing
stimuli trigger inhibitory mechanisms that block access to the native
language.
giovedì, maggio 17, 2012
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